For the International Unity of the Working Class!

The great strategic task of the modern epoch is the forging of the political unity of the workers of all countries, races, and ethnicity as the decisive international revolutionary force. The IYSSE is the only youth and student group whose program is based on the common interests of the international working class.

The contradictions of the capitalist system will drive the working class into struggles that pose the revolutionary reorganization of society. These struggles will assume an explicitly international character, arising objectively from the advanced level of the global integration of the productive forces.

This is the age of a globally integrated mass society. Approximately seven billion people inhabit our planet. All the great social problems that confront modern society—the provision of food and other basic necessities, education, medical care, housing, social infrastructure, the development of natural resources—require solutions that are collective, not individual, in their character.

Class Unity Versus Identity Politics

The promotion of innumerable forms of “identity” politics – based on the elevation of national, ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, gender, and sexual distinctions above class position– has played a significant role in undermining the struggle for the unity of the working class and lowering class consciousness. This shift from class to identity has been at the expense of an understanding of the real causes, rooted in the capitalist system, of the hardships that confront all working people. At its worst, it has promoted a competition among different “identities” for access to educational institutions, jobs and other “opportunities” which, in a socialist society, would be freely available to all people without such demeaning, dehumanizing and arbitrary distinctions.

This shift, promoted by the Democratic Party in US and its allies among the advocates of petty-bourgeois identity politics internationally, has had a devastating impact on the conditions of life for the broad mass of minority workers. The IYSSE demands full equality for all people, and defends unequivocally their democratic rights. All forms of discrimination based on national, ethnic, racial, religious, or linguistic heritage, or on gender or sexual orientation, must be abolished.

Oppose nationalism! Unite workers across borders!

An essential precondition for the forging of this unity is the unconditional defense of the democratic rights of immigrants and refugees throughout the world. The IYSSE must campaign relentlessly against attempts by the capitalist parties and corporate media to whip up anti-immigrant chauvinism and scapegoat this oppressed section of the working class for the unemployment, attacks on living standards and destruction of social rights produced by the capitalist crisis. The IYSSE stands for the right of workers from every part of the world to live and work in the country they choose, with full citizenship rights, including the right to live, work and travel without fear of deportation and repression.

Join the IYSSE!

Take up the fight for socialism!

Read the IYSSE Statement of Principles for your country, and submit your contact information to join the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.